


Other Virtues

by miss_pryss



Series: Other Virtues [1]
Category: Sneakers (1992)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 13:19:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/598210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miss_pryss/pseuds/miss_pryss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nobody expected a respectable businessman to drive a van blind. </p><p>All of which is to say, Whistler was not so very disappointed when everything went belly up again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Other Virtues

**Author's Note:**

  * For [twistedchick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedchick/gifts).



It took a while to pack up his stuff. It would have been a big job even if Whistler had been able to _see_ his stuff—there was a lot of it. A lot of the audio equipment Whistler had at Martin’s offices was his own, and Martin gave him the rest of it when he started shutting down the tiger testing operation.

“Makes me feel a little sad,” Liz said. “Seeing you guys all going your own ways.”

“You’ll still see plenty of me,” Martin said. His voice moved closer to Liz’s. Whistler heard a soft kiss, and smiled. 

“You two are adorable,” he said.

“They’re adorable, all right,” Mother said, huffing a little. “Too cute to help me carry all your stuff. Whistler, why do you have _so much stuff_?” 

“You’re one to talk,” Martin said. “Do you really _need_ every year’s yellow pages dating back to 1968?”

“If you have to ask,” Mother said stiffly, “then you don’t deserve an answer.” 

“He thinks there are messages from the lost city of Atlantis coded across the consecutive yearly listings for hot tub dealerships in the Bay Area,” Whistler said. 

“I’m pretty sure they just want to rejoin the modern world quietly,” Mother said. Whistler finished sorting through a stack of data tapes and handed them to him for boxing up. “But you never know. Being stuck at the bottom of the ocean will do strange things to a person—even a ten-thousand year old wizard.”

“Good thing Crease isn’t here,” Liz said. “I think he’s allergic to this kind of talk.”

“Yeah,” Mother said, “it’s not as much fun without Crease around.” Then, sounding sort of sheepish, “Don’t tell him I said that.” 

They weren’t really all going their separate ways, not entirely. Whistler and Mother were going into business together, and Martin had started talking about getting Crease to go in on a private detective outfit with him when he got back from Milan. 

“Any word from Carl?” Whistler said. “I haven’t seen him turn up on any of the networks since—”

“Hmm,” Martin said into the ensuing silence. “Well, he’ll come around.”

 

_Five years later—_

James McNeill Partners had offices listed in a snazzy high-rise, all reflective glass and cement atriums, in downtown San Francisco. Rent was paid promptly by automatic transfer every month, and every now and then the space was actually used for client meetings. But the three tidy, generic rooms generally stood empty; Whister and Mother did almost all of their business out of Whister’s shabby, sprawling pre-war apartment in Oakland. The place was heavily modded out with specialized equipment, and Whistler knew the precise location of every object in it. 

More to the point, however: Whistler’s apartment was where Whistler’s cats lived. 

There were three of them — Joybubble, Crunchy, and Wozniac. Whistler had never had pets before but in the first year after the team split up, he’d found himself getting lonely in all that quiet. Nobody on Martin’s team had been especially loud, but five humans create a lot more hubbub than two do, even taking into account Mother’s constant low-grade stream of cheerful paranoia and conspiracy trivia. 

The cats were an excellent solution—though an accidental one. Whistler had inherited Captain Crunch, an eight-year-old Siamese, when the old lady next door died and her daughter came to town to sort out the apartment.

“I don’t know what to do with her,” the woman said. Her voice was high, stressed, the sharp midwestern vowels that she shared with her late mother emerging through something more recent—she’d moved to the East coast for college, and stayed there, probably. Whistler stood in his doorway and listened to the cat, tucked under the woman’s arm, muttering in outrage. He’d heard it before, through the walls. She was a chatty animal. 

Whistler put his hand out in the direction of the cat, extending his fingers. There was a soft, brief brush of whiskers and a faint huff of warm breath before the cat turned away and started up her litany of complaints again. 

“I can take her,” he said. 

Joybubble and Wozniac followed not long after—Whistler had asked the shelter on the phone if they had any especially noisy cats, and once he was able to persuade them he was serious, he’d sent Mother to pick up two little balls of fluff that kept up a chorus of shrill mewling well into the night. Whistler had never slept so well.

 

Business with Mother was mostly sort of boring, but these days boring business was good business. 

They’d escaped some scary stuff by the skin of their teeth in that last job with Martin; when Whistler and Mother had founded James McNeill they’d agreed to keep to quiet, strictly above-board, small-time stuff. That limited their job opportunities somewhat; people don’t generally hire surveillance teams for especially benign reasons. But they found gigs, and here and there Bishop & Crease Investigations sent them some work. It was enough to keep body and soul together. Whistler spent most of his money on nice furniture and cat food; Mother worked on completing his collection of back issues of _Mad_. 

“There’s nothing more important than sticking it to the Man,” Mother explained, poring over his latest acquisition. Whistler heard a gentle rustle as he turned the pages of issue number four reverentially. “And these guys made it an art form. I mean, _potrzebie_.” 

“We all have our holy texts,” Whistler agreed. 

“What’s yours?”

“ _Engineering and Operations in the Bell System_ ,” Whistler said. A soft pat-pat-pat was heading in his direction—probably Crunchy. Joy and Woz usually moved faster than that. He put his hand down and a furry face pushed itself into his palm. Crunchy.

“Takes all kinds,” Mother said.

“That it does.”

 

Boring was good. 

Boring was good. 

Boring was—it was boring, was what it was.

Whistler was a respectable businessman now, and he was bored, though he felt a little guilty about it. It wasn’t all bad, after all. The technology kept getting better and his toys kept getting fancier, and that was nice. Every now and then he met Liz for lunch or a concert. It was all very civilized. Sending Abbot a holiday card with a peace dove on it every year was the closest he got to mischief. “Remember your promise,” he wrote in every one. After the first year he started getting a generic card in return every December. “Season’s Greetings from the NSA,” they all read, according to Mother. Whistler hung them in the reception area of the James McNeill offices. It was amusing.

But tiger testing with Martin had been _fun_. Granted, it had nearly gotten them killed. But even that part had been kind of fun. He’d gotten to drive the damned van, after all. 

Nobody expected a respectable businessman to drive a van blind. 

All of which is to say, Whistler was not so very disappointed when everything went belly up again. 

They were on a job with Martin and Crease, slumming it in an empty building opposite the client’s offices, all the equipment set up and activated, waiting for something interesting to come down the line. Mother was tormenting Crease with his latest theories—the _X-Files_ fan groups on Usenet were doing marvels for Mother’s repertoire—and Martin was sitting quietly, leafing through a magazine. Every few minutes he moved his arm—either checking his watch or picking his nose, Whistler couldn’t tell. He liked to imagine it was the latter, but the former was a whole lot more likely. 

The room was drafty and it smelled like old carpet and One Shot Sign Painters’ Enamel. 

Martin picked his nose/checked his watch again.

Whistler wondered what his cats were doing. 

The window exploded. 

“Shit!” Crease yelled. Whistler hit the floor—always a good default until you knew what the hell was going on. He could hear Martin breathing above him—far above, so he must have stood up. Mother had yelped when the window broke—he was nearest the window. Whistler strained to pick out anything more from Mother, but it was hard, the sounds were confusing, nothing made sense, unless— 

There had been four people in the room, and now there were five. The new person shifted his weight, broken glass crunching underfoot.

“I’ll be goddamned,” Crease said. Whistler sniffed tentatively; the smell of paint and mildew had been enriched by gunpowder and cologne. 

“Well,” said a new voice. “This is a surprise.” The weird thing was—Whistler was happy to hear the voice even before he placed it. 

“Carl?” Whistler said. 

“Oh, hey, Whistler,” Carl said. Whistler heard the telltale sequence of fabric rustling and metal shushing against leather—Carl was holstering a firearm. A semiautomatic pistol, the magazine not fully loaded. Footsteps (dress shoes, new) approached, and Whistler reached up to meet Carl’s hand. There were new calluses on the kid’s palm and index finger. Target practice, lots of it. 

Carl hauled him to his feet, and Whistler put a hand on his shoulder under the pretext of steadying himself. Slim but solid, more muscle there than the last time they’d been in the same room, five years ago, when Carl asked an NSA agent for her phone number and disappeared from their lives. For good, they’d thought. 

Whistler let his hand trail along Carl’s arm as he stepped back. He was wearing a jacket, expensive, smooth, lightweight wool, nicely tailored. A tuxedo? 

“Why are you dressed like that?” Martin asked.

“Why are you here?” Crease asked. 

“Long story,” Carl said. “Hey, listen. I could use a ride. Do you guys have anything?” 

Martin sighed. “Okay, team, this gig is a bust. Everyone into the van.” He sounded like a long-suffering sitcom mother. Whistler looked down to hide his smile.

“We should probably hurry,” Carl said. The smooth, confident tone had a faint edge of stress to it, and Whistler wished he still knew Carl, still knew things about him, like his favorite kind of sandwich (peanut butter and honey) and how long it took him to start snoring in funny little whistles when he fell asleep in briefing meetings (seventy seconds on average). But the world was a volatile place, especially their shadowy little corner of it, and a man could change a lot in five years. So it was hard to tell if this new Carl was the same old happy, goofy kid Whistler used to know and had only crashed into an abandoned building through a plate glass window as a prank—or if he was a tightly controlled, highly trained professional who was seriously concerned about everyone getting killed if they didn’t run fast but was hiding his worry well. 

Actually, when he put it that way, it was pretty clear which was the likely answer.

“So, how long have you been a spy?” Whistler asked. 

“I knew it!” Mother crowed. 

“Carl,” Crease rumbled, the sitcom dad, “is there something you’d like to tell us?”

There was a strained silence, and in it, Whistler could just make out footfalls in the building opposite, running fast—and sharp, angry voices. “On second thought,” Whistler said, “You can tell us all about it at my place. You’ll like it. I think. Do you still like cats?”

“Cats?” Carl said. Gunshots rang out across the street. 

And then Mother was grabbing his arm, and they were running headlong and messy down the stairs and into the van and Whistler felt the road thrumming under them and heard Mother wheezing, asthmatic from their sprint, and felt Carl’s warm shape next to him on the floor of the van, foot jiggling nervously, still familiar after all those years. 

 

Whistler listened to Mother making his methodical way through the security system, Crease tagging along after him, marking each measure and making note of any weaknesses. Crease had taken off his jacket and loosened his weapon in its holster the moment they’d arrived at Whistler’s apartment. It was nice having scary guys with guns on your side, especially when there were scary guys with guns on the other side. 

Carl was standing near the door, talking quietly with Martin. Whistler could make out a few tense words here and there—enough to tell the conversation wasn’t getting either of them anywhere.

“Kid,” Whistler said. “Carl. Whatever your name is now.” 

He could hear the smile in Carl’s voice, the tension mostly gone. “It’s still Carl, Whistler. Most of the time.” He walked closer, and Whistler heard his ankle pop as he knelt down to pet Woz and scratch the thick fur under his ears. It made a pleasant shush-shush sound.

“Do you have a safe place to stay?”

There was a pause. If Whistler had been in Carl’s position, not that Whistler really knew what that was, but he could guess, could guess enough—well, now would be the point he’d be deciding just how honest to be.

The rest of the room was casually silent, everyone else waiting to see what Carl would say.

“No,” Carl admitted after a few second. “Not really. Not right now.” 

“You got a boss or something waiting for you to come back?”

“No. I’m…I’ve gone freelance.”

Whistler thought hard about boring, and about peanut butter and honey sandwiches, and about whether cats made good judges of character. Probably not. But he wasn’t a bad one himself. The cats had other virtues. 

“Do you have a good crew watching your back?” he asked.

“Hey, wait a minute—” Martin started.

“No,” Carl said quietly. “Not anymore.”

“You want one?” 

“Just one second, Whistler—” Martin tried. 

“I volunteer,” Whistler said. 

“Ditto,” Mother said. “‘What, me worry?’”

“Guys!” Martin said. “Crease, talk some sense into ‘em.”

“I don’t know,” Crease said. “Fine, upstanding, talented young man like our Carl here needs a good crew.”

“Hey, what is this?” Martin said. “We have no idea—literally _none_ —what the situation is here. We don’t even know if we can trust Carl—no offense, Carl—”

“None taken,” Carl said graciously. He was still scratching Woz’s chops—the little cat’s purring had gotten loud enough to compete with the hum of the refrigerator. 

“—or what we’re getting ourselves into, how dangerous it might be, what kind of enemies we’ll be making…” Martin finished, a little deflated. 

“Martin,” Whistler said kindly. “Liz told me you spent four hours reorganizing your shoe closet last weekend." 

“Very wise, that’s just the type of place the MIBs like to leave their mind-control devices,” Mother interjected.

“Mother, _I will cut you_ ,” Crease told him.

“So what’s your point?” Martin said. 

“Man cannot live on shoes alone,” Whistler replied sagely. 

“Oh, for—”

“I could use your help, Martin,” Carl said softly. 

Martin sighed. Whistler knew that sigh. It was the sound of a man bidding farewell to his better judgment. 

_Good boy, Carl_ , Whistler thought. _I set him up, you knock him down_. 

And then, _I should ask Liz if she’d be willing to take care of my cats for a while_.

 

Three weeks later, they were in Hyderabad. Whistler could hear kids running in the street outside the hotel, merchants shouting at a nearby market, and somewhere a little further off, a goat.

There were at least eight flies in the room, and one of the biggest cockroaches Whistler had ever heard. He pulled his feet up off the floor and kept working, setting up a routing path for the tradeoff call scheduled in ten minutes. It was complex enough to protect their location for the minute or so required to exchange the necessary information. And if it didn’t, well, Whistler had scary guys with guns on his side.

He wondered what his cats were doing.

**Author's Note:**

> Nerdery: 
> 
>  
> 
> [Why Whistler and Mother named their company James McNeill.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistler%27s_Mother)
> 
>  
> 
> What Martin Bishop's team does in _Sneakers_ is properly referred to as "[tiger testing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_team)."
> 
> Ladies and gentlemen: [Engineering and Operations in the Bell System](http://www.binrev.com/forums/index.php/topic/5574-engineering-and-operations-in-the-bell-system/).
> 
> [Potrzebie](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potrzebie).
> 
> Come find me [on tumblr](http://misspryss.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
